


Birthday Candles

by wavewright62



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Birthday, Gen, Kill It With Fire, Trolls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6870400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/pseuds/wavewright62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Worst. Birthday. Ever.</p><p>This is a contribution to the SSSS Multimedia Fanworks Exchange, responding to Sc0ut's prompt:<br/>"Someone in the team has their birthday while the expedition is in the Silent World. Do they get to celebrate?  (I'm okay with anything, shipping or darker themes or whatever.)"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthday Candles

Breakfast was hot, but that's all it had going for it. Emil cupped the mug in his hands as he walked over to the desk, where Tuuri was setting up for the day's writing. A rotten floor had given way under Sigrun two days ago, and she was temporarily laid up with a leg injury. To pass the time and keep from going stir-crazy, Sigrun was telling Tuuri some of the details of earlier book raids for the expedition journal. Emil glanced down at the sheet Tuuri had just laid out, and almost dropped his breakfast when he saw the date on it.

So much had happened this winter that he’d lost track of the days. He hadn’t quite appreciated when he signed up for this expedition that he’d be in the Silent World on his birthday. His birthday, today! Twenty, a big one, too. He stared glumly down into the congealing stuff in his mug. If he were home, he’d be getting cake for breakfast today, and singing. No chance of getting that here.

They had made their way to a large school (Tuuri said it was a university campus) and the tank was parked next to what had been the library. Emil had spent yesterday taking fancy-looking books from the library, and today was going to be more of the same. Mikkel was getting bags ready to come along as well, to help guide which books might be most promising.

Some of yesterday’s haul was laid out, disinfecting in the patchy winter sun with Reynir masked up to tend them, in between making another of those snare things. The snares were supposed to be for catching animals to eat, but Emil had his doubts. They looked too delicate, and anyway what if they caught a Beast, who would have to deal with it then? I would, Äck, Emil grimaced.

Then he remembered Lalli cleaning the skull and skeleton of the dog Beast, laying out all those bones in a pattern like that, and then climbing a tree to sing to the skull. Emil couldn’t finish his breakfast after thinking about _that_ and left his mug to be cleaned. Mage stuff, Tuuri called it. Hmmm.

“Mikkel,” Emil asked as they walked to the library, “are any of those books we’ve brought in about magecraft?”

“Hrm, nooo,” Mikkel considered, “that sort of superstition didn’t really arise until after the Rash. Even if there were, we Danes wouldn’t set much store by that sort of thing, certainly not in a university like this one.”

The front entranceway of the library building was partially collapsed, but the large room they were getting the books from was down a corridor and not too bad. There were tall bookcases arranged in staggered rows and other than some insect damage, a thick layer of dust and some rodent droppings, the books in this section were usable. Mikkel showed Emil that the books here were arranged with several of the same type together, and he wanted Emil to take one or two books from each shelf instead of cleaning out one complete shelf at a time. Emil didn’t see how that mattered, but did as Mikkel instructed. They got to their third load, and even the cat had gotten bored and walked away.

Mikkel trundled past Emil, with bags fully laden and an armload of books piled up to his chin, and looking fairly pleased with himself. “We’ll have to leave the rest here now. Finish up that load and I’ll meet you back at the tank.” Mikkel’s footsteps receded.

Emil hoisted his own bags onto his shoulders and across his body, adjusting the straps around the bandoleer of cleanser gear. He hadn’t brought his gun with him, but he couldn’t _not_ have his incendiaries available. They’d come in handy quite a few times this trip.

He started to shuffle sideways out of this series of bookshelves, but a title on the spine of one of the books caught his eye. “Magi” it said in faded gold letters. He took the book down from the shelf and opened it. The Danish was hard to read and there weren’t many pictures, but it looked like there were some poems. Lalli sometimes uses poems when he is doing mage stuff, he thought to himself. Another book on the shelf was more promising, with pictures and diagrams. A third had pictures in it that suddenly reminded Emil of the design that he once saw shimmering in gold around Reynir, on the scary night when Lalli was screaming and wouldn’t wake up. He thought it was his imagination, but Tuuri said that Reynir thought he was a mage, too. Maybe Reynir had been doing something to Lalli, something magic? He seemed pretty harmless, but Lalli certainly didn’t like him much, that was plain to see. Impulsively he grabbed a few more books from this shelf and tucked them beneath his arm but was leafing through the one with the pictures as he edged out of the stacks.

The white stars bursting in his vision were accompanied a moment later by an explosion of pain at the back of his head and he sprawled forward. The armload of books prevented him from taking the fall properly, and he hit the floor awkwardly on top of a loaded carry bag. He swiveled as he got up as quickly as he could, narrowly avoiding another swipe at his head. Another arm sliced up from below, a third and fourth and more were ripping at him and Emil started bashing at the arms with one of the magic books, dropping the rest.

Where had this troll come from? They’d been here two days, Lalli hadn’t scouted it, even the cat hadn’t been bothered earlier today. Most importantly, he had to get out! All he could see of the troll as he bashed at it was one single eye and a tangle of teeth surrounded by its flailing arms. Emil stepped backward, but tripped on his dropped books and fell. As the troll battered his legs and lunged for his face, Emil crammed the book he was holding into the snapping mouth, and could feel gore and teeth on his hand and splashing on to his face. It bought him enough time to hoist himself up and shamble for the corridor and the way out.

He knew he couldn’t call for Sigrun, he was on his own. The troll had bludgeoned his legs through his pants in several places, but hadn’t gotten through the boots. He could feel blood running down the back of his neck from the blow to the head. The rucksacks full of books had protected his sides from slices, but he could barely breathe without pain from falling onto them. He was almost to the corridor, but the troll was getting up and regrouping. He had a quick impression of one large wide foot holding up the curved slicing bones and its one eye and the red hole where the mouth used to be; he’d be able to outrun it for sure, even in this state.

With an harsh cry the troll pushed itself into the air with its powerful foot. As it came down it brought the arms around into a ball around itself and started rolling quickly toward Emil. Emil promptly forgot his injuries and sprinted down the hallway, rucksacks bouncing painfully onto his sides.

He grabbed at his bandoleer as he ran, bringing out the balls of accelerant-soaked fluff he’d been experimenting with. He found he could make flame bombs, which while useless for bringing down a building, worked well against small Beasts. Time to try them out against a troll! He poured accelerant out in a trail behind him as he reached the end of the corridor and the entryway. Quickly he clambered up the pile of rubble from the collapsed ceiling and threw the empty canister of accelerant at the troll behind him.

The troll unwound itself at the foot of the rubble pile and as it begin to climb after Emil, its single eye rolled up to fix upon its prey, silhouetted in the sun streaking through the open roof. With shaking hands, Emil lit and tossed a flame bomb, which missed the troll and rolled ineffectually behind it.

The troll did not advance, and in fact was still, gazing up at Emil.

He managed to finally get another one lit and he threw it at the troll, yelling, "This is NOT how I wanted to spend my BIRTHDAY!" With that, the second flame bomb hit the accelerant trail next to the troll and ignited with a flourish.

 _BIRTHDAY ... The cake was beautiful, with swirls of whipped cream and fifteen slender candles. "Happy birthday, Martine! Make a wish and blow out all the candles."_  
_I am fifteen at last! I’ve waited so long!_  
_Mama, why are they not going out?_  
_Papa, help, they're still burning! I'm trying as hard as I can, but they're burning!_  
_Papa! PAPA! HELP ME!_  
_PApA!_  
_hELp M_  
  
Emil readied another fireball while he watched the troll writhe and burn, but didn't light it. There wasn't really much else in this room that would ignite, and he didn't want to waste the flame bombs. Once he was sure it wouldn't follow him, he shakily clambered down from the rubble.  
  
Outside, he squinted up at the sun, but it was disappearing behind some clouds. Woozily he trudged to the tank and once there he leaned against the side and called out for Mikkel to help him decontaminate and get stitched up. Mikkel emerged with his apron covered in blood, and Emil thought he was going to faint. "Vaaa... did something happen to Sigrun again?"  
  
Mikkel wiped bloody hands on the apron before washing them. "Eh, no. This is from dinner. Reynir's snares caught two rabbits, we'll eat well tonight. What about you, let's get a look at you. Wait," he looked behind Emil to the library, surprisingly intact except for a tendril of smoke coming from the hole in the roof, "you didn't burn down the building this time?"  
  
Emil managed a weak smile and shook his head. "Meat for dinner? A mighty birthday feast."  
  
Mikkel’s eyebrows went up. “It’s your birthday today? Very good, thanks for the sunshine. Did you take a fall? Let's get you cleaned up.”  


_The sky was dark and studded with stars. The water was still and clear, reflecting the sky and stars. A silver angel strode across the water, with the green trees of heaven behind him. He extended his arms toward her, murmuring softly in the language of heaven, which she could not understand._  
  
_And then she could._

**Author's Note:**

>  _I_ know, and _you_ know, that magic and magecraft has screeds of books and scholarly references about it in our time, but skeptical _Mikkel_ didn't know that.
> 
> The resident teenager is good with floor plans, who knew? Once she sketched out her idea of the library building's layout, I was away.
> 
> Have you guessed that the "silver angel" is Lalli, coming out of his haven to release Martine's soul? Of course you _know_ that Finnish is the language of heaven.


End file.
